Saturday, August 27, 2011

Rachael Lloyd comes clean

Last year English journalist Rachael Lloyd put a positive spin on being single and childless in her late 30s:

I relish my freedom of spirit, financial independence and surrogate family of friends and work colleagues.

... I'm perfectly happy with my lot ...I love my job and wake up each day raring to get to work ... I spend my evenings seeing friends, dining out, going to the cinema or working out at a posh gym ... When I'm feeling maternal, I borrow a friend's King Charles Spaniel, Stella, for cuddles.

...There's a freedom to my life that I know I would never have if I was married with children

But she's now written another column, this time confessing that she is grieving over the absence of children:

the pain of being childless throbs away in my chest, and sometimes it feels unbearable. There are evenings I go home and just lie in the dark waiting for the day to end and my disappointment to be wiped out by sleep.

There are also few people I can talk to about it. My deeply mourned infertility is somehow seen as my own fault — a badge of shame that I have to wear.

...As each month passes and the tick of my biological clock gets ever more deafening, I have to face the fact that motherhood is highly unlikely to happen for me.

...I have no partner with whom to commiserate, no one to put their arms around me and tell me that it doesn’t matter, I’m still loved. I’m in this alone. Life can, at times, seem sterile and lonely.

Her autonomous, independent, modern girl lifestyle has led her to what she feels to be a sterile and lonely life.

Why did she not meet someone and have children? It's the predictable reason. She went along with the idea that her 20s were for partying, career and casual affairs with unsuitable men and that husband and children would just happen naturally after she turned 30:

So how did I manage to miss the boat? How did I mess up so spectacularly?

During my 20s, I put in long days as an aspiring journalist, and at night I partied with the best of them.

...Like a lot of women my age, I’d thought 30 was probably an ideal age to settle down. But once I hit 30, it was as if I hit an oil patch and the years just slipped away. The men I dated either weren’t at the same life stage as me, or simply didn’t have the money to commit to a baby.

I've had a ball and many passionate experiences, but nothing functional enough to constitute a long-term future - and never anyone 'normal' enough to bring home to meet the parents.

She's an attractive woman who in her 20s rewarded unsuitable men. Now, in her late 30s, she'll take anybody:

But as I approach 40, the landscape is not promising. Yes I date, and I’ve had some deliciously romantic experiences, but I feel this reccurring panic. Instead of getting to know someone slowly, I find myself sizing them up. Would they make a good father? Are they solvent enough? Could I wake up next to them each morning without wanting to strangle them?

If so, would they be willing to just get a move on and impregnate me?

There's one aspect of what went wrong for Rachael Lloyd that I should go back to. She writes that when she hit 30 and finally started to take the idea of marriage seriously, that the men she dated were not at the same life stage or didn't have enough money.

Reading between the lines, I imagine that she wanted an old-fashioned type of man successful in his career who could provide her and her future children with an upper middle-class lifestyle (whilst she perhaps did some occasional freelance work from home).

It's not that I think there's anything wrong with a middle-class woman having such an ideal. But how did she expect it to work out? How did she expect a family oriented, upper middle-class man to be waiting there for her when she turned 30?

If a man knows that he's not going to be wanted as a husband until about his mid-30s, then isn't it possible that his motivation to push ahead in a career will suffer? And what if, in his 20s, he is forced to compete with a cohort of highly careerist female peers for jobs and promotions and be put at a disadvantage by affirmative action policies, both official and unofficial? And what if young men realise that women are rewarding men not for their family guy qualities, but for being "villains and addictive personalities" - is that going to leave a pool of family oriented career men waiting for women when they turn 30?

If women like Rachael Lloyd still want to end up with a family oriented, career successful man, then they have to be part of a culture that encourages the production of such men. There should not be an assumption that a successful and stable family life is something that happens regardless as some kind of personal right.

This is a point that was made in Dalrock's post on the same story which can be read here.

57 comments:

Re: “But as I approach 40, the landscape is not promising. Yes I date, and I’ve had some deliciously romantic experiences, but I feel this reccurring panic. Instead of getting to know someone slowly, I find myself sizing them up. Would they make a good father? Are they solvent enough? Could I wake up next to them each morning without wanting to strangle them? If so, would they be willing to just get a move on and impregnate me?”

Of course, nothing ever changes. Despite all her ‘lessons’, it’s still us men who have to foot the bill and bend over backwards to accommodate her ‘needs’. If only we just got over it and impregnated her, already. Yes, the prospect of committing to you, honey, makes me week at the knees. Not. Fact of the matter is this: us traditionalists get so vilified and ridiculed for our political beliefs that my heart leaps with the joy of perfect schadenfreude when I read these articles. This female is completely irredeemable. The kind of man she would probably like right now will hold her in nothing less than absolute contempt, and that’s the way it should be.

Bibi Lynch has figured out too late that men like young, fertile women. Well, duh! "Men, even if they're 50, put their ideal woman's top age as 28" -- yeah, so why didn't you know that when you were 28?

She says:

"I think the feminist teachings of the Sixties and Seventies seeped into our brains. My mum couldn't be called a feminist, but I, too, grew up thinking we could be anything we wanted to be - and have a fulfilling career, life and relationship.

We didn't delay marriage and motherhood deliberately, but felt there was more to contend with beforehand.

What we didn't realise was that men wouldn't be interested when we were ready. My generation was spoilt - unrealistic, even - and we wanted everything to be heightened and fabulous. And that has been our downfall. The beautiful Lisa Snowdon included."

Yup, exactly right!

Meanwhile, Rachel Lloyd is stupid.

"In all honesty, I'm no longer at my sexual peak. Two years ago, aged 36, I was - and that's when I missed the comfort of a long-term relationship most."

Perhaps she's showing the typical "double-think" (term from George Orwell, 1984) thinking format from women? It seems for whatever reason that a proportion of women want to say simultaneously "yes and no", "black and white" and overall place two opposite or different things in the same bin. On the other hand perhaps by not marrying and reproducing her genetic makeup she has not only saved grief for a man but has also not replicated liberal leaning children. We also have the problem of near dominion of liberalism in culture and philosophy though and that needs to be taken care off. I will write in the future a book collection concerning liberalism, religion, society and time. Cheers.

I was cute when I was a teenager, so I had my fair share of teen romances. However, in my 20's I became invisible to women. I became a 'nice guy'. I learn now that nice guys(or at least those of us who acted nice) are not attractive to women. Being called a 'nice guy' is a kiss of death. You are asexual.

Something happened to me once I hit my 30's. Female friends and acquaintances who had spent the past decade screwing around now saw me as prospective beta provider husband. They started hitting on me. Anyways, I wasn't so nice after all. Why would I want that type of woman when I could get one so much younger who hadn't screwed around. I married a girl more than a decade younger than me. We now have 3 kids.

Fact of the matter is this: us traditionalists get so vilified and ridiculed for our political beliefs that my heart leaps with the joy of perfect schadenfreude when I read these articles. This female is completely irredeemable. The kind of man she would probably like right now will hold her in nothing less than absolute contempt, and that’s the way it should be.

Wonderful comment Kilroy. This point needs is extremely important as well and an example is available below:

Why would I want that type of woman when I could get one so much younger who hadn't screwed around. I married a girl more than a decade younger than me. We now have 3 kids.

The man above and others are currently choosing this path. They don't seek out wasted women and wrong girls to bring home, build a life with and face a future with. Some of they actively reject women with wrong thinking and liberal worldviews.

When I go on facebook and look at all the girls who married in their mid-twenties...

They were the most sexually active in highschool and college.

I think there's a Sexually Active sweet spot for women.

Most women whom are sexually active in high school and college continue so throughout their lifetimes. They probably married a man and are having lovers behind his back. Who knows perhaps they will tire of him and will divorce him in the future.

If your wife wasn't a virgin on the wedding night, then You Shouldn't Be Cussing Out Liberal Women.

You married one.

Anonymous you don't seem to understand the issue. He didn't marry a liberal woman, he avoided them. You seem to have an inner desire to display approval on promiscuous women or better yet say how it's not right to marry young because they must just all be slutty!

You are currently displaying the technique "Na, na you can't say no to these chicks because you must have married them! Yep!"

Unfortunately Anonymous that is not true. Generally the men whom what gamers and PUA's call "betas" are wising up little by little and marrying good women instead of damaged goods and immoral women. Perhaps you want to say that he married one because that's what you want for either yourself, a family member or one of your friends. Which one is it?

Now I think this is terrible....But it's the reality of What I've Seen in My Real Life.

Yes promiscuous women and early sexually active women may marry young but they marry men whom share the same nature as themselves (players, womanizers) and tend to commit adultery, cuckoldry, divorce and approve of non-monogamy.

In real life we have the SMP (Sexual Market Place) and the MMP (Marriage Market Place). In the MMP we have two sections: the secular section and the religious section. In the religious section some are liberal but others are devout and orthodox. I've noticed something about you recently:

If you say "I'm going to wait for marriage" then you end up being an old maid like me :)

I may have misread you. Apologies. Anonymous if you're a virgin religious girl then go to your marketplace. And cut a lot of things you have in your list for the perfect man. Put about 1 to 4 important aspects you want in a man and that's it (that includes both physical and mental aspects). Go to dating websites, go to religious worship places and meet men. Avoid the marketplace you are not suppose to be in and cut down the list for the ever illusive perfect man. Also remember that you have to offer something to him and be a catch. It's not just about the man, it's about the woman too. Blessings on your journey.

So what's the difference between all the girls I know who are married by 25/26 and the 30 something women that You Men Scorn?

I think it's luck.

So really condemning these 30 something women is b.s.....

I disagree completely. I must have written about a dozen of these posts. In each one, the woman admits that she turned down offers from decent men when in her 20s, because she wanted adventures etc.

These women are following a script which tells them that their 20s are for parties and careers and that it's not right for them to think about marriage until their 30s.

That changes the way that women select for men. If all women want is a non-serious, casual affair then, as a previous commenter put it, they can choose the foreign waiter. Or they can go to nightclubs and play games with players.

Rachael Lloyd is a pretty woman. In her 20s she would have held a strong hand when it came to relationships. If she wanted marriage back then, she could have had it. But as she herself put it, she chose to go for "good-looking villains and addictive personalities" which is a high-falutin' way of saying bad boys.

White civilization cannot advance without them, they have in large part willingly betrayed their own kind. As these women age and face the consequences of not having children, an overt awareness of it will likely intensify.

No one group has bought into the gender grievance fantasy than white women, a considerable number seem to pursue extra racial affairs just to antagonize white men.

"The anonymous who married the woman 10 years younger...If she wasn't a virgin at your wedding...then isn't she just the Lucky Version of all these feminist women?

If your wife wasn't a virgin on the wedding night, then You Shouldn't Be Cussing Out Liberal Women.

You married one."

Just a few points. I read my post again and I did sound a little pathetic. I was not a total loser in love. I had quite a few relationships. But the kind of girl I would have liked to marry in my 20's, had other guys in mind. I'm a naturally shy Northern European, so I probably seemed a bit stiff. One 20-something party-girl friend once half-joked, that we should marry if we found ourselves single at 35.(great deal for me)

To address your point. My wife was a virgin when we met but not when we married(I didn't claim to be a saint).

"isn't she just the Lucky Version of all these feminist women?"

The difference with my wife is that when she found someone half decent in her eyes, she married them.

"then You Shouldn't Be Cussing Out Liberal Women."

I don't mean to cuss liberal women. I have empathy for them. I just think they were sold a bucket of lies. They were told they could have everything. They were not warned about the risks of postponing marriage and motherhood.

My wife is slightly liberal while I'm somewhat conservative.

I would have liked to marry when I was in my 20's to someone a similar age but that didn't happen. In my 30's I didn't want to get married to some ex-party girl. So, that's why I ended up with someone considerably younger.

Most women whom are sexually active in high school and college continue so throughout their lifetimes. They probably married a man and are having lovers behind his back. Who knows perhaps they will tire of him and will divorce him in the future.

What a lot of assumptions. Most people I know were sexually active in high school and are not a bunch of cheaters. I'm not saying it's the best path, just that this is a gross over generalisation that I don't think has much merit.

Also, for the love of all things holy, stop misusing the word 'whom'. Just use 'who' from now on; you'll get it right more often than you'll get it wrong.

White civilization cannot advance without them, they have in large part willingly betrayed their own kind. As these women age and face the consequences of not having children, an overt awareness of it will likely intensify. I think you should read the "Garbage Generation", can be found for example at: http://www.fisheaters.com/garbagegeneration.html . It gives you answers to your questions. Or find some articles by F. Roger Devlin. I do recommend.

You slept with your wife before marriage and what would have happened if you hadn't married her?

And you slept with all those girls in your 20s and you didn't marry them....

I'm sorry men, but you can't have it both ways.

It's just not right for you guys to sleep with women, then have relationship problems because you were sleeping with the wrong woman, and then be all bitter on the internet.

Maybe I should change it...

Until you men start living up to your own values, women can't either.

Essentially, you used the woman in your youth and then turned around a married a younger one who hadn't been used yet.

But you are still part of the problem.

And if you think the sex thing doesn't make a difference...I remember in college I KNOW that I got passed up by at least one guy (most likely two) because of my beliefs. Obviously he wasn't worth it, but he qualified as a 'half decent guy'

Men are having a crisis. Most who have had absentee fathers who even though they were in home were not present to their children both male and female. Now we are facing the age when men have no idea how to be men or how to get off the starting blocks to conduct a relationship with the view to marriage. Coupled with this the lies that women have been told that they can have everything, a university degree, a career and children when they are ready. We have a major men drought for many educated women. So many older women are marrying old men who are becoming fathers for the first time in their 40's and women becoming mothers in their late 30's pushing the body at a time when it wants to slow down. So I guess we need to teach women at school fertility runs out, the eggs get fried and one day they just stop and the chance of children is gone forever.

And even if there is truth to what you say "that the women didn't want to get married."

Then What Were You Doing Dating Those Types of Women?

Anon, speaking for myself, I chose not to date the wrong sort of woman. I told myself over and over that I only had to meet one woman who didn't act like the rest and things would be OK. But there never was one such woman - not until I got old enough that the women I was meeting no longer wanted adventures with bad boys but wanted marriage and family. Then there was suddenly a wealth of choice of 30-year-old women acting all nice and flattering me and handing me their cards etc. Suddenly my problem wasn't an absence of eligible women, but which one to choose.

The problem is that the long delay in women taking family guys seriously creates all sorts of problems: some men will drop out, some (many) will adapt and become players, some men and women will become too set in their ways, some (many) will experience fertility problems and so on.

It's not that every single woman is at fault. But we do need to change the female script. Instead of middle-class women having a script which says "delay any serious consideration of family until your 30s" we need the time frame to come back to, say, mid-20s.

"And you slept with all those girls in your 20s and you didn't marry them"

It would be hypocritical if this was true. I had a few relationships that went nowhere for the usual complicated reasons. I was never a player, rather a slightly socially awkward romantic.I made a commitment to marry my wife quite early in our relationship. We're still together more than a decade later.

I agree, women would be happier having families younger for so many reasons.

I believe that there are some men who genuinely don't become attractive to women until their late 20s and 30s.

It's a harsh reality and very miserable, but in the end you guys all did fine and in some cases better than fine.

I think it's right for men to criticize Liberal Women. But there is something wrong when you talk about how "you were rejected so they get what they deserve." Attitude.

Because underlying that attitude isn't a desire for love, marriage, children....it's a hatred for being sexually rejected at your peak.

And I don't trust you guys honestly because I think "well if you weren't rejected by these liberal women...what are the chances that you would have kept your conservative values?"

And this is why you guys miss out on some very important aspects on this war...(I know that your blog focuses on one aspect as a strategy)

Men need to lead. Both intellectually and by setting examples.

And that's what I don't see in my real life.

Even in the 'good relationships' the marriages are only producing one child. I know that most men deep down inside want a football team :) Yet all the men seem content with 'just one or two' (even the ones who marry young)

Men shouldn't just have these discussions with the females, but also with males.

I don't think its right to date all through college and still not get married till your 27. Both sexes are at fault.

We need to speed dating up. And in order to speed dating up men and women both need to have a bit more self-control and focus from Day 1.

That is one of the roots of the problem (on top of the time it takes to become economically situated.)

Anonymous I just refreshed the screen and read your post above the ones I just wrote.

I'm glad you found a soulmate and had three kids and did the right thing.

But in my generation beta's have embedded the immoral sexuality and sexual entitlement to the point where their arguments are meaningless. They are just trying to manipulate me to achieve their own sexual ends.

No one group has bought into the gender grievance fantasy than white women, a considerable number seem to pursue extra racial affairs just to antagonize white men.

This may or may not be true. I do know, however, that at least some liberal white women who date or even marry outside their own race hold an impossibly high standard for approval of white men and a much lower standard for non-white men. These liberal white women are concerned that any of their attitudes or behaviours be construed as (gasp! shudder!) *racist* when interacting with a protected minority. Consequently, they treat protected minority men with kid gloves. Things these liberal women would not put up with from white men they have no problems with whatsoever if they are in a relationship with a protected minority male.

I have spoken to others who have corroborated this observation of the liberal white woman double standard in their expectations of white men versus protected minority men. One work colleague related a story of how her sister dated a protected minority male and showered *him* with gifts and even lent him a good sum of money a short time after which he ended the relationship, debt unpaid.

Any woman in her right mind would never exhibit such behaviour with a white man, but with a protected minority, not a problem!

Do I get the pass to criticise you liberal women, then? 'Cause I refuse sex before marriage, and I'm certainly not planning to get married to someone who isn't a virgin like myself.

University graduate speaking here, and I've seen so many like you who expect that someone is waiting to take the sloppy seconds. Newsflash: The person willing to take the disrespect you have given by being with others before them, is also going to be the person who disrespects you in turn. What goes around, comes around.

My overall point is that partying and sexuality are no longer preventing marriage.

The girls from my highschool-(middle class)---who followed liberal principles Still Got Married to Solid Men in their mid-twenties or younger.

The women that we make fun of on this site are the unlucky ones (of course I am not at the age where I start seeing divorces so you never know) but they are by no means acting differently then the people I know who are married.

In fact, the virgins I know have more problems finding people then anyone else. One girl I knew got married at 29 (30?) to a guy who had children from a previous relationship. And I thought to myself "Great...that's what you get for following the rules?"

And I was upset at the male anonymous because I thought he was a hypocrite. I know men who are hypocrites---willing to take advantage of the new sexual values, but then mock the women who get thrown to the side. And I hate those men. They are bad bad people who are just bitter that they didn't get laid enough. They pretend to have morals, but they have the lowest of them all.

But the kind of girl I would have liked to marry in my 20's, had other guys in mind.

But then you married such a woman, 10 years later, which proves that women in their early to mid-20's who want to marry a nice non-player exist, right? For whatever reason, you met her later rather than sooner. And if she exists, then other women of her age when you met also exist who want to marry good guys.

I think I now understand the point you're making. And you're probably right. A woman can sleep around in her teens and early 20s and still marry (that happened to a sister-in-law of mine).

But the smart women do, at least, exit the party girl stage in time to attract a man whilst they are at their peak. So it's not just a question of luck that some women manage to marry and others don't.

There's also evidence that the more sexual partners a woman accumulates, and from an earlier age, the more likely she is to divorce. So it will still pay, in the sense of marrying successfully, for a woman to exercise restraint in her behaviour in her teens and early 20s.

I live in the Mariana Islands and a good number of successful 30+ year old males have come out here for employment. Every one of them married an Asian, Chamorro, Filipina, Thai, etc. The long term success rate is outstanding.

The females are definitely not subservient. They generally seem to be appreciative of maturity and stability. They're generally industrious. Family is important to them. When you make babies you get your hybrid vigor.

I got lucky at 40, but if I'd known at 25 or 30 what I know now, it'd have been a one way ticket then.

There are some great American females and many go unrecognized for the diamonds they are. However, a disproportionate number of Americans (both genders) are superficial and materialistic.

Yes, Western men have the option of marrying Asian. But it does come at a cost - you don't get to continue on with your own ethnic tradition. I personally wouldn't want to give up identity as a solution to delayed family formation.

I live in a suburb that is filled with married Western women. They make great wives and mothers - when and if they eventually get around to it. The solution is a cultural/political one - to make clear the damage done by the current life script presented to Western women.

"But then you married such a woman, 10 years later, which proves that women in their early to mid-20's who want to marry a nice non-player exist, right?"

The kind of girl I wanted back in my 20's were the sexy alpha girls. They remind me of Rachael Lloyd who inspired this thread. My wife is not an alpha girl but we hit it off and we've had a very interesting life together. Since we married she's finished her degree, we've travelled the world, and we've found time to have 3 great kids. Of course there are great girls out there who want what most of us want.

OK, so the problem was you. The typical Gamer whine is that the problem is all with the young women and what they want, and I assumed that you were continuing that script. It seems to me that for every young woman who is not choosing dating partners based on whether they are good husband material, there is a young man who is not choosing women based on whether they are good wife material. It makes sense that the situation would be symmetrical, because the root of the problem is that everyone operates on the assumption that marriage should be delayed, so why would a 20 year old (male or female) be concerned with the spousal qualities of a date?

One of my friends from my early twenties dated sluts pretty steadily, then suddenly changed his preferences in his mid-twenties and married a very nice girl. When young women engage in this pattern of behavior, the vitriol in these discussions is toxic. Do people really not see the symmetry of male and female behavior?

Oversimplification. Why wouldn't I want the most attractive girls? I had dated them a few years before. But they didn't want to settle down while they were at the height of their power, not while they were intoxicated by it.

Perhaps because attractiveness is only one quality, and not the most important one in a future spouse? Of course, at that age, you did not have the maturity to know what was important in a future spouse, which is exactly my point. Many (but not all) of the young women at that age also did not know what was important in a future spouse. The situation is symmetrical, contrary to the incessant complaints of Gamers.

The idea isn't "you did not have the maturity to know what was important in a future spouse, which is exactly my point."

It completely ignores the fact that "dating" or "relationships" for most people includes "sexual intercourse", meaning even if you are a "future spouse which has good qualities",your ability to stay in a marriage has been "pumped" out of you.

Meaning even the so-called "good girls" are no good anymore after their bed-hopping is done.

It seems to me that for every young woman who is not choosing dating partners based on whether they are good husband material, there is a young man who is not choosing women based on whether they are good wife material.

Clark,

Things might well have evolved that way - it's hard for me to tell as I've been married for close to ten years now.

But I don't think that's how the situation started out. It was strongly impressed on women back in the 1980s and 90s that sexual liberation meant having sex for sex alone. There were radical changes at that time. Middle-class women started to swear, get tattoos, binge drink and have casual sex based not on hopes of romance, let alone marriage, but on sexual attraction alone (ladette culture).

Does that mean that some men happily went along with all this? Absolutely. Some men did "better" with women that they would have done under the older culture.

But it wasn't necessarily equal numbers of men and women. A "player" man of the time could have had casual sex with multiple women, whilst several more family oriented men had no relationship at all.

If relationships are based primarily on sex, rather than romance or marriage, then that will of course change not only what women select for in men but also what men will select for in women.

Men will start to think that what matters is "hotness" - the erotic appeal of a woman is what will increasingly matter. What else would matter if it's just a sexual transaction?

It's only when a man starts to think of marrying that he will (if he's prudent) think about compatibility, values, intelligence, motherhood qualities etc.

Again, that's why the culture is unlikely to change whilst a serious consideration of marriage is pushed back to the very last moments of a woman's fertility.

The moaning about equality in sexuality between men and women, i.e. the anonymous posts stating that men should be the leaders, and from Clark Coleman arguing about symmetry. . . well, its wrong.

There is no fundamental reason at all for sexual behavior to be distributed equally across the genders. None. Although I rather doubt that there have been any studies that conclusively demonstrate inequality, it follows from what we know about female sexual selection.

For example, lets say there are 100 men and 100 women in the population. 20 of the men sleep with all 100 women, and the other 80 men sleep with 1 woman each. Your final distribution of men will have 20 men who have slept with a ton of women, and 80 men who have slept with a single woman each. Your distribution of women, on the other hand, will have all 100 women having slept with at least 20 men, then with some variation above 20.

Because women are sexual choosers, they can freely have sex with the 20 men, even if the other 80 men all say "we're going to lead by not sleeping with any women". The men cannot lead until later in life, when they become the choosers (i.e. in the 30s and 40s, when women start mate-seeking.)

If you're arguing that men should lead, men ARE leading. Men lead by selecting for women who are focused on family, which tend to be younger women. Arguing that men should be behaving in specific ways in their 20s misses the point: the men who are getting no sexual partners have no power to influence, and the men who are getting tons of sexual partners have no incentive to change things.

P Ray -- "...Meaning even the so-called "good girls" are no good anymore after their bed-hopping is done."

THAT has been said a while back by the blogger Rexpatriarch: "...you can't turn a whore into a housewife." And you shouldn't waste your time trying.They were told and warned years ago that they couldn't hate men into loving them, but they refused to listen. Well, this is a bed which they have spent a long time making for themselves, so make them lie in it -- ALONE.

Men -- Bicycles Don't Need Fish, Either! So be a Happy Bicycle! Ditch the Fish, and Go Your Own Way!

I don't think that people are getting my point, so I will try again. There are symmetries and asymmetries in the relationship game. The fact that someone can point out some asymmetries does not disprove other ways in which there is symmetry.

The symmetry is simple: Marriage is delayed, therefore a 20 year old does not have to place highest priority on what makes a good spouse when choosing someone to date. This applies to both men and women.

There are contributing factors to the delay in marriage besides feminism. To name a few: (1) Widespread divorce scares people away from marriage, and we parents don't really encourage our children to marry early because the prospect of their divorces scares us to death. (2) Children do not grow up with the responsibilities of kids from past generations and do not mature as quickly. This makes them not ready for marriage as soon. (3) We have oversold college as a necessity for career success, so that some guy who will probably end up being the shift supervisor at a local warehouse has to get a paper credential that is irrelevant to his actual job, else he will never get a foot in the door. In the past, he would have graduated high school and started working his way up the ladder with on the job training. He would have been ready for marriage at 21, with some money and some maturity, but today he is a junior in college at 21 and he would not dream of getting married.

These are a few of the societal factors that are very significant. Traditionalists really have to think about how to turn back the clock on all of these factors. Otherwise, most 20 year old men and women are just not going to be choosing dating partners based on mature considerations of marriage potential. When that happens, unless we undo the sexual revolution entirely, we are going to have exactly the problems we have today.

Yes, there is a feminist problem, and there are asymmetries between the sexes, but there are huge societal forces at work here that must be faced, and most of them are symmetrical.

The asymmetry of one person in the relationship having STDs, a damaged ability to bond with the partner, maybe abortions and a drug problem along with outstanding student debts and an inability to take the partner seriously since "the partner isn't her first" is not going to make marriage happen.

Good men should never be yoked to used women, that leads to family breakdowns and social injustice. Like it or not if a woman wants a quality man SHE has to keep her own impulses in check. Since the role that men played in telling her what was acceptable and what isn't is now grounds for "he is destroying my self-esteem" and "he makes me feel scared" nonsense.

Speaking in abstractions about the idea of contributing factors is simply tiptoeing around the fact that no man wants to marry a town bike,and that many women ARE the town bike.

"The symmetry is simple: Marriage is delayed, therefore a 20 year old does not have to place highest priority on what makes a good spouse when choosing someone to date. This applies to both men and women."

I think this is only half true. Sure, it applies to them both, but as another commenter pointed out, the men don't really have much choice but to be that way since at this stage in life, the power of sexual choice lies with the women. You can be all "family guy" at 20 if you want, but all the young girls don't want to be with the buzz-kill. A beautiful young woman who thinks like "family guy" will always have guys sniffing around, and from that amount, a decent number willing to change to win her.

To return to Anonymous' point. If you were being a good girl in your teens and early 20's what kinds of guys were you hoping for? If you were hoping for Fabio or something up there is it unreasonable to think they would just fall into your lap? Would you have been happy with a beta at that time, especially if you yourself were a beta? Or would you have insisted on or wanted something better?

All people's inhibitions are lowered these days, men's, women's, promiscuous and non-promiscuous. I've seen "good" mothers bitch out their spouses in front of company because they lacked all restraint. I've seen "good" virgin girls be totally aggressive in their pursuit of a partner and totally lose their tempers if they weren't successful. If someone wants causal sex and pursues it aggressively they're not that far removed from someone who aggressively pursues marriage formation, because both people are prioritising personal desires ahead of things like consideration for others, restraint, decorum and right conduct. This is the case even if one choice has positive benefits that the other doesn’t.

A women who is very aggressive in her pursuit of a husband will likely want to dominant him in that relationship. Sounds good for the guy.

All people's desires and attitudes have to be toned back a bit.

When expectations get too high it becomes a mad dash of competition and people get hurt or fall along the way. Just throwing it out there.

You know you might just find this piece was simply a transitional moan. I regret it - not the lack of chidren - but the raw editorial which deliberately played to type and allowed a blogger to air scathing, misogynistic views. Life is too short to go 'what if' or 'if only'. The idea that I partied away motherhood is inaccurate sexist twaddle.